Icelandic Author and Filmmaker Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir Shares How to Use Your Intuition to Thrive and Lead In A Turbulent World
In a world drowning in data and decisions, it’s easy to forget the quiet inner voice that once guided us so naturally: intuition.
But what if that voice was more than just a gut feeling? What if it were a skill, a muscle, or a compass for life’s most uncertain terrain?
That’s precisely what Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir—an Icelandic author, filmmaker, and systems thinker—invites us to consider in our latest podcast conversation. Drawing from ancient Icelandic wisdom, global leadership, and personal healing, Hrund shares a concept called InnSaei, the Icelandic word for intuition. But as she reveals, InnSaei is far deeper than a single definition.
Let’s unpack some of the powerful insights from this episode—and why learning to use your intuition may be the most essential life skill you’ve forgotten.
Watch The Conversation
What Is InnSaei?
In Icelandic, InnSaei has multiple layers of meaning:
"The sea within" — a metaphor for our deep, unconscious mind, rich with creativity and insight.
"To see within" — the call for self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
"To see from the inside out" — living with a strong inner compass that helps navigate external complexity.
As Hrund explains, intuition is not mystical or flaky. It’s fast, adaptive, and deeply rooted in biology and culture. And it’s something we all had, but many of us lost.
Why We Lose Our Intuition (and Imagination)
One of the most staggering moments in our conversation came from a study Hrund cited:
98% of 5-year-olds score as creative geniuses. By adulthood, that number drops to 2%.
What happens?
Systems happen. School happens. Life happens.
We trade exploration for structure, prioritize analysis over imagination, and stop trusting ourselves in favor of measurable outcomes.
But intuition isn’t just a creative luxury. It’s vital for mental health, decision-making, and even innovation. Nobel laureates, for example, consistently show strong mental agility—the ability to switch between analysis and intuition.
How to Rebuild Your Relationship with Intuition
Hrund offered three actionable practices that anyone can start using today:
1. Spend Time in Stillness
Your intuition can’t shout over a busy brain. Carve out quiet space—through walks, meditation, or unplugged time—to reconnect with your inner landscape.
2. Start Journaling (for Real)
Whether it’s stream-of-consciousness writing or “attention journaling” (where you track what you’re focusing on), journaling helps make the invisible visible. As Hrund put it:
“When you write it down, your thoughts stop swirling—and you begin to see yourself more clearly.”
3. Honor Your Own Experience
If you constantly override your feelings, you erode trust in yourself. Listening to your body, your emotions, and your gut builds confidence in your inner compass.
Why Leaders (and Everyone) Need Intuition Now
This conversation wasn’t just philosophical—it was timely. Hrund argues that intuition is a strategic asset, especially for leaders in a post-pandemic world filled with uncertainty.
“The most courageous leaders now say: I don’t have all the answers. Let’s figure it out together.”
This humility, emotional intelligence, and adaptive thinking isn’t just good leadership—it’s good humanity.
Final Thoughts
We live in a world obsessed with knowing more. But perhaps the most powerful shift is learning how to know differently.
To feel. To sense. To see from the inside out.
If you’ve been searching for clarity, confidence, or connection—you might not need to look outside yourself. You might just need to listen within.
That’s the wisdom of InnSaei.
— Connect With Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir —
Website: https://hrundgunnsteinsdottir.com/
Book (INNSaei): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063430681/
Hrund’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKufhUZRJ1E
Follow Hrund on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hrundgunnsteinsdottir/
Connect with Hrund on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrundgunnsteinsdottir/
Transcript (May not be exact)
Julian Hayes II
(0:02) All right, thank you, Hrund, for joining me. (0:06) I hope I said that correctly. (0:07) I practiced beforehand, so.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(0:09) Super.
Julian Hayes II
(0:10) Perfect, awesome. (0:12) I'm off to a good start. (0:13) Thank you so much for joining me.
(0:15) And I said beforehand, we're gonna get into your book, but I wanna go ahead and show it that this is one of the best looking book covers that I've seen in my life. (0:24) I mean, it is a fantastic book cover. (0:27) The book is also fantastic, but just the book cover is so attention grabbing.
(0:32) So I just wanted to shout out you and your team for the cover right there. (0:38) Yeah, thank you so much. (0:40) I just, I agree.
(0:41) I think it's a really stunning cover by Sarah Kellock, that's signer, and I'm just super happy about it too. (0:46) When I got my hands on this, the US and Canada version a couple of weeks ago, I was just stunned. (0:53) I was like, wow, this is, yeah, it's beautiful.
(0:56) So thank you, I'm really happy about it. (0:57) Awesome, and so I figured to start this off with a very important topic. (1:02) And I see that you're an avid skier and I don't have a winter sport yet.
(1:08) So I'm curious, what makes skiing so enjoyable? (1:12) Oh, I love skiing. (1:13) So, you know, I do different types of skiing and my favorite one is ski touring.
(1:21) So that's like slalom skiing, but you put skin under the skis and you walk up mountains. (1:27) So when you do this for the first time, you're just on your regular skis and you're walking up the snow. (1:33) It's almost like, you know, challenging gravity, you know?
(1:36) So it's just, it's a beautiful, and the way that I've done ski touring in the Alps and in Iceland as well. (1:42) So you can, when you do it in Iceland, you can go to the top of a mountain and you can ski down literally to the sea. (1:47) You're just alone in the middle of nowhere and you hear the wind, you may be on a glacier.
(1:53) It's just, it just reminds you that we are just this tiny grain of sand in the universe and nature is absolutely stunning and it makes you very humble towards the forces of nature. (2:09) And obviously coming from a country like Iceland, it just, it's a constant reminder that nature is always evolving. (2:16) Yeah, so I love it.
(2:17) And then I love to go to like really steep from the top of a mountain and just go for it and just trust my body and legs and my practice in skiing and just hope for the best. (2:28) That sounds absolutely exciting because in Nashville, so this past winter, and winter here is like a, it's a very blimp, it's nothing. (2:38) But the city will shut down a lot of times with just the threat of a little snow, it shuts down.
(2:46) But then this time we had a couple inches, maybe three or four. (2:49) Things were shut down for a while. (2:52) No school, nothing.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(2:54) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(2:54) And so I've always wanted like a real, to experience a real winter. (2:58) So to do that in Iceland, I would need to go, what time of the year could I experience something like that? (3:05) So to experience the snow, because wintertime in Iceland can also be no snow, like in Reykjavik and stuff.
(3:13) So I would go to the north and I would go to some of the fjords in the north. (3:18) So I have a ski tour in a place called Fjordur. (3:25) And it's just like this incredible fjord covered in snow even in June, in early June.
(3:32) So I would go to the north in Iceland and that would probably be your best bet to experience the snow. (3:39) Okay. (3:39) Because that seems scary when you said like a, you're on a glacier and then you just come down and there's not much, there's not many people out there.
(3:47) But it's also exciting as well though, because I don't really get to experience that a lot. (3:51) And I don't think a lot of us do in my area where it's just, you're really out there with nature and the elements. (3:56) And that really reminds you.
(3:59) It really reminds you. (4:00) And you know, you don't have to do it skiing. (4:02) You can also, we have trucks that you've never seen anywhere else.
(4:06) Like the tires are so big, they're probably higher than I am. (4:10) And so they take you up to the top of a glacier and down again if you don't ski or something. (4:15) It's just, I really like, our glaciers are disappearing, right?
(4:19) The climate is getting warmer and we even did a funeral for one of the glaciers in Iceland that has disappeared. (4:28) Oh, wow. (4:28) And the glacier's name is OK.
(4:31) O-K, like literally. (4:34) And it's pronounced in Icelandic, ok. (4:36) It has a different meaning.
(4:38) But it's, our glaciers are disappearing and they have in them stored so much memory and so many minerals. (4:46) And there's so much history in glaciers. (4:49) You know, the biggest glacier in Europe is actually in Iceland.
(4:53) And I don't know if like, it's, yeah. (4:56) When I'm speaking with you about this, I'm just being reminded that not everybody is familiar with snow or has ever been on a glacier. (5:04) And to me, that's like magical.
(5:05) There is so much energy. (5:07) I so recommend it if people get the chance. (5:10) I think the thing is that's the, like when you mentioned that, you know, temperatures are getting warmer and you're noticing those things.
(5:19) I think sometimes when I hear that, I'm like, I'm in the Southern US. (5:24) It's always hot here. (5:25) And so you don't really think about it.
(5:28) But your location, you can more visibly see something like that, where it is actually real. (5:35) Whereas to me, you just hear it and it's just an afterthought. (5:38) You know, it's so true.
(5:39) You know, it's only like maybe four years ago I was in the North staying with friends. (5:44) And this was in, I think it was only in September, maybe October. (5:49) And there's permafrost in the ground where in countries that have the cold so much.
(5:55) So permafrost is something that is, it keeps the soil of the mountains intact. (6:01) You know, so that it doesn't just go down the mountain. (6:04) Do you know what I mean?
(6:04) So it keeps the soil intact. (6:07) And because of the warmth and that the air is becoming warmer, this is eroding, you know, nature's ability to keep the soil cohesive and intact. (6:24) And so we literally had to evacuate from a friend's house in the middle of the night because the hill was just falling on our houses that we were staying in.
(6:35) You know, stuff like this. (6:37) And it's like, I think climate change and climate warming is something that it's, you know, an invitation to all of us to use our imagination, to be able to imagine what it is to live in places. (6:54) How would it affect different places in the world?
(6:57) What happens to your life and livelihood? (6:59) What happens, for example, like happened to us in this case, the road went in two pieces. (7:05) So there was this big hole in the road, like crevasse, so we couldn't drive over the road anymore.
(7:12) So it's just, I don't wanna say simple things like that, but these are things that we take for granted. (7:18) And so it wasn't even snow or anything. (7:20) It was just a regular mountain, but it, you know, so there's so many things that can happen because of the increasing heat in the earth.
(7:31) And I think it's time for us to activate their imagination, to really be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes and just try to understand better what's happening. (7:41) You know, our imagination is sometimes just as valid as news can be. (7:46) And we all know that news depend on where they come from and stuff like that.
(7:50) And our intuition helps us, you know, activate that imagination to be able to understand how people are navigating the times we live in. (7:59) Yeah, you know, and this, I think this is a good segue is that you mentioned imagination. (8:03) And I think of Picasso when he said, everything you can imagine is real.
(8:06) And I, going through the book and then reading up on you a little bit, suppose your mom's a self-taught pianist. (8:14) Your dad's building two homes, ran a company with his grandfather, captain of a handball team. (8:18) And then all of a sudden, national golf team for senior players.
(8:22) So those are multifaceted people that is not just stuck in one box. (8:27) So I'm curious, and you had three siblings as well, I believe. (8:31) I'm curious, growing up in that type of environment, what are maybe two to three lessons that has really shaped and forged you into who you are today?
(8:41) That's a beautiful question. (8:43) You know, my mom passed away last year. (8:46) And when I was writing the books, she was still alive.
(8:49) And yeah, so this question hits me straight to the heart. (8:54) So what my parents and what their way of living and making a living taught me, and I think my siblings too, was that we could do more or less anything we set our minds to. (9:09) We've also kind of talked about it, me and my siblings.
(9:13) It's interesting because when we were growing up, we didn't experience, like we never had a conversation at home where our parents expressed envy towards somebody. (9:26) You know, they were always happy for other people's success. (9:30) And then thirdly, I would say that in my case, I feel like I've taken much from my dad and my mom, and it's probably an inspiration for me.
(9:43) So my mom being a pianist and also an artist, and my dad, this entrepreneur and businessman, for me, it's all part of the same bundle somehow. (9:54) And so I find it very easy. (9:57) It comes with ease that I translate a method or a tool or an idea from business over to art or art over to business.
(10:08) Or like there's this borderlessness in the way that I've somehow chosen to navigate life and work. (10:16) And I also mentioned in my book that I've had close to 30 job titles in my life. (10:23) So creative director, filmmaker, statistician, chair of innovation investment board, and so on and so forth.
(10:30) There's so many different things. (10:32) So maybe, yeah, I would say these are the three things that my parents varied background and ways of navigating the world taught me. (10:45) Yeah, I started to smile.
(10:47) I smiled when I saw 30 different things that you've done, because I feel that way to a certain extent. (10:54) And I don't know if it's maybe a culture thing that I feel like society a little bit wants to force us into a box and say, hey, you're this person and don't do that. (11:05) Whereas for me, I'm like, I love doing this podcasting, right?
(11:09) And if I talked about food and exercise all day, that would be very boring because there's much more to think, right? (11:15) And so I'm very much into arts. (11:18) I'm very much into music as well.
(11:20) And I wanna talk about all those things, right? (11:22) And I think it's so hard to break out of that. (11:26) So I'm curious, do you think it's the way your environment helps you never to be contained in that?
(11:33) And if so, have you seen others break out of that and how can they do that? (11:38) So there's two things that come to mind. (11:41) On the one hand, my background is not conventional.
(11:46) So, and probably like yours, we talk about portfolio career instead of climbing the ladder, you know? (11:52) So we are one of those people, right? (11:57) So I've very often been like in conversations where people ask me what I do and I just dread the question at some points, like, because at that point I may be doing something that is like a mixture of things.
(12:09) And I don't know how to explain it in one sentence and stuff like that. (12:14) But then on the other hand, there is, I think our conversations around these things are changing a lot. (12:21) So for example, I just came from a World Economic Forum Women's Summit last weekend and we were talking about like global issues and people were introducing themselves and somebody said, I'm a generalist.
(12:36) And then I grabbed the chance to say, what does that mean? (12:39) And we dived into it. (12:40) And actually what she was saying was that she had deep knowledge in more than one area of work.
(12:46) And so I proposed to the women there, why don't we just talk about ecosystem intelligence? (12:51) Because that's a very valid term for knowing different things and how to connect them because the world is very complex, not just complicated. (13:03) So that it's very organic like a rainforest or a body and everything is interconnected and you can't just take things apart and then put them back together again.
(13:12) And imagine they're gonna work like before, see what I mean? (13:15) So that's kind of the world we live in today. (13:17) So that's ecosystem thinkers.
(13:19) But then the other thing that came to my mind was this Icelandic background. (13:24) So Iceland is the third happiest country in the world. (13:28) We are economically well off, relatively.
(13:32) Last century, we were the poorest country in Europe but we are doing, I would say really well today in so many ways. (13:41) The fact that fascinates me about Iceland and I didn't really realize this until I started to work for the UN as a statistician looking at Iceland from afar. (13:52) And that is that the Icelandic economy is relatively big compared to the number of people who live in Iceland.
(14:03) The Icelandic economy is also relatively sophisticated. (14:09) And it has everything that you have in really big global cities or big countries. (14:14) What this means and translates into when it comes to people who work and live in Iceland is that we tend to do lots of different things throughout life.
(14:25) So we start to work really young, usually. (14:29) And we are very used to wearing more than one hat when it comes to jobs or titles. (14:36) And so we need to do lots of different things.
(14:39) So there is also the sort of, the bad side of this is that you may have really deep expertise in bigger countries where people can really just focus on one thing. (14:51) I think Icelanders tend to, of course we have that too, but we tend to focus on many different things. (14:55) So I think it all kind of just comes together.
(15:00) Yeah, and I think with the way the world's going and then how that dynamic's changing, I actually think more people are going to have to take this type of approach of having a portfolio of skills, a portfolio of different careers and everything, because I think just everything's being fragmented more and more and more. (15:20) Yes, exactly. (15:21) And there's a really good friend of mine who has really been trailblazing this conversation about portfolio career.
(15:28) Her name is April Rinne, she's also from the States. (15:32) And she wrote a book called Flux, Eight Superpowers for a World in Flux. (15:38) And she writes and speaks a lot about these things.
(15:42) And she has these amazing, just really empirical stories about how that translates into the world we live in. (15:51) So I really highly recommend that people get familiar with her work and thinking. (15:57) Yeah, I just wrote that down.
(15:58) I'm going to check that out. (15:58) That sounds interesting as well. (16:00) So you're giving me even more ideas.
(16:01) So I'm curious, I read in the book also, I think it was around, let's see, I think it was late 20s, I believe, is kind of when you hit the dip and kind of went to a not so good place and everything. (16:14) And then from there is, I guess, what I call the reinvention, the revival. (16:20) And so when you're in that moment of just everything just not going well, I guess, what was the first step, if you remember, that you did?
(16:30) Yeah, so when I look back, it's easier to kind of look at a first step. (16:37) I think just for people listening, if they find themselves in a really hard, dark, lost place, then I just want to say that it's very understandable not to know what the first step should be. (16:52) And sometimes if the first step is even worth it, we can really be down as humans.
(17:00) But I had this, I was aware all the time that I was losing the sparkle in my eye. (17:09) That is the words I would use. (17:12) I would look in the mirror and really look myself in the mirror, look into my eyes and think the sparkle isn't there.
(17:18) And I felt like I was just kind of existing, but I wasn't fully alive. (17:22) I was really aware of that the whole time. (17:24) So I was seeking that kind of inner alignment, just feeling that synchronicity, feeling that harmony from within and with the world around me.
(17:36) So that's one thing. (17:37) I was looking for something I couldn't quite put my hands on. (17:43) I also got some help from wiser people, who would, there's one amazing woman who is a healer and she actually taught me how to sleep again because I kind of had lost the ability to have proper sleep.
(18:01) But I think that journaling and the writing was really crucial. (18:08) I think that's when something really started to happen and evolve and develop differently. (18:16) And I do want to add, because I tend to forget to mention this because this is something I've taken for granted.
(18:21) And that is going out, breathe the fresh air, going out for a walk. (18:28) I lived close to the sea in Iceland at the point when I was going through a really, really, the worst time in this period. (18:39) And it was just so regenerative, like we talked about before we started recording this conversation.
(18:45) And so journaling, going outside, going for a walk, moving your body, keeping movement so that you don't get stuck. (18:52) So getting stuck in a pattern or a place is also literally about getting stuck. (19:01) So it's moving one leg in front of the other, walking around, swimming, going for a run if you can, whatever you do, just move your body.
(19:11) And what's water move? (19:14) All these things help you unleash what it is that you need to unleash. (19:22) Now, somebody's going to see the book cover and they'll be like, Innsaei, what is Innsaei?
(19:27) So somebody comes up and asks you that, how would you explain it to them? (19:31) Innsaei is the Icelandic word for intuition. (19:35) It's such a beautiful word.
(19:37) So my really tough time in my late twenties forced me to look within because I had nowhere else to go. (19:46) And that's when I started to really look at intuition. (19:49) Intuition is something that we hear and we may talk about sometimes, but I didn't really take it that seriously.
(19:55) So I really started to dive into what is intuition. (19:58) And I read a lot, mostly in English. (20:02) I spoke to people around the world, mostly in English.
(20:05) And it just brought me back to my backyard, to Iceland, to this beautiful, wise Icelandic word, insight. (20:12) Before I explain it, I have to share with you that Iceland has its own language, Icelandic. (20:20) And we really want to protect our language.
(20:23) And every time there is a new invention, there is something new that is introduced into our culture. (20:28) And we need to find the word for it. (20:31) We don't just put an Icelandic accent to an English word or Danish word or whatever.
(20:35) We create new Icelandic words and they are relatively transparent in comparison to most other languages. (20:43) And they describe the function of something, the logic of something. (20:47) So insight is made up of two words, in and sight.
(20:52) In means insight or into, and sight means to see or the see. (20:59) So the way that we opened up this word in our documentary film about insight, intuition, which was shown worldwide on Netflix, is that we opened it up in a threefold meaning. (21:14) So insight, the concept with a capital I and a capital S means the see within.
(21:24) And the see within is referenced to this ever moving, ever flowing unconsciousness that is inside all of us. (21:34) It's the see within cannot be put into boxes or silos because then it ceases to flow. (21:40) It's the world of imagination.
(21:42) It's a world beyond the words. (21:44) It works super fast, way faster than our conscious mind, conscious focused mind. (21:52) So the world of imagination, creativity, connecting dots, super fast.
(21:58) And secondly, insight means to see within. (22:03) So it means to see inside yourself because the very first step that we take when we want to align with and train and hone our intuition is to know ourselves better. (22:16) So self-awareness, our ability to know ourselves well enough to be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes, but also importantly, our ability to be able to discern intuition from fears and biases and wistful thinking.
(22:34) So this is a super important part of how we learn to hone our intuition. (22:39) And then thirdly and lastly, insight means to see from the inside out. (22:45) And that has to do with how we navigate the ocean of life with a strong inner compass.
(22:51) So being aligned with and being practicing, honing our intuition gives us a very strong inner compass, which is also super important in today's uncertain, fast paced world where most of us are finding it quite hard to even just recognize our own opinions about things, let alone experiences of the real world. (23:20) Mm-hmm, absolutely. (23:22) And before we go into each of those three right there, I completely agree about that a lot of it's hard now with so much information.
(23:30) And if you're not conscious and intentional with that, you're gonna be inundated 24 seven with information and you're not even gonna even know, do I believe this or what's my even opinion on this? (23:41) Because you're, and so that's once again, where it's critical to get out in nature, take a break from the phone screens and really just get in tune and the journaling to think, what do I actually think? (23:52) What do I actually believe?
(23:53) What are actually my values? (23:55) And so I have a question in the book, I think it was Dr. George Lan and Dr. Beth, what was her name? (24:04) Dr. Beth Jarman. (24:05) They were working with NASA and I highlighted that they wanted to identify creativity and divergent thinking. (24:13) 98% of the five-year-olds fell into the genius category of imagination and then 15-year-olds, it's only 15%. (24:22) An adult is only 2%.
(24:25) Yes. (24:27) How do we lose this imagination that it seems we're all inherently born with? (24:34) So this is such an important and great question.
(24:38) And I think, I guess there are many ways to explain this, but what they do in the research and this is the explanation they will use is, we need to make sure that, so the way that I approach this is to talk about the two rhythms. (24:55) So we are made up of two rhythms. (24:58) If you allow me just to take you and the audience on a little journey of our imagination.
(25:04) So one rhythm is the rhythm of being, the other one is the rhythm of doing. (25:10) One rhythm is the intuitive rhythm, the other rhythm is the analytical rhythm. (25:16) There's the rhythm that is receiving and opening and open to the world.
(25:21) The rhythm that is open to receiving the world without any plan, without any deliberation. (25:28) And then there's the other rhythm which is very deliberate, focused, targeted. (25:34) One rhythm is about manipulating the world, making sure that we survive, build houses, fix roads that we were able to live in the cold.
(25:43) And the other rhythm is the rhythm of imagination and more airy sort of things, just to imagine things. (25:51) So we need to imagine, we need to be able to imagine possibilities in order to be able to make them happen, right? (25:59) And so what do we learn in school?
(26:03) So I write about this a little bit in my book, but I've created an education program myself and I've thought about this quite a lot. (26:12) And I also refer to the work of Ian McGill-Christ, which I highly recommend in the book. (26:17) So the way that we've structured education systems around the world, and especially following the Industrial Revolution or around the Industrial Revolution is to create education that is easily replicable, easily comparable, can easily be translated across different sectors and spectrums.
(26:40) And I mentioned the word replicable and comparable, and it's also an education system that we can relatively easily evaluate and measure and quantify. (26:53) But the world of imagination, intuition, creativity, the world of our felt experiences, our subjective ability to feel the world, to be in awe, to relate to people, to be in line with our emotions, that doesn't fit into that system. (27:19) So I think we can think about it a little bit like a person with two legs and the person is seriously limping.
(27:28) So it's like one leg has been really firmly trained and nourished and the other leg is just neglected. (27:35) And I think we've neglected our capacity to be creative, to be highly imaginative like this research shows. (27:46) It's still a very valid, relevant research.
(27:50) I encourage people now that are the audience, the people who are listening now to really just think about, okay, if I think about the schools that I went to, if I think about the schools that my kids go to or the schools in the neighborhood where I live, how much emphasis do they place on the arts, on playing, on mind-wandering, on using intuition, on creating something without a plan? (28:22) So what I mean by without the plan in terms of creating, I don't mean to say that artists and creative people never have a plan, not at all, because we often need strong framework or a timeframe or something to kind of, to give us some rules to work with that often gives us more space for creativity. (28:43) But let's say if we decide that we are going to create something, like I'm telling you I'm gonna create something and I will say to you, I'm gonna create this, I'm gonna finish it by Friday, it's gonna look exactly like this and this is what you can do with it.
(28:56) I'm not being very creative, am I? (28:58) If I've decided everything beforehand. (29:00) So I think it's that space between the ignition, the sense that something could actually come out of something else.
(29:11) This early stage of having ideas or feeling that something is lacking or could be, we need to give that way more space and nourish that ability, I think, in the human spirit. (29:23) Yeah, I started to laugh on that because I think about school and when I first thought about kind of what you were talking about in intuition and that was, I think we're uncomfortable with the unknown.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(29:39) Yeah.
Julian Hayes II
(29:39) And I think like we can know what we want, but we have to know how we're gonna get it, right? (29:46) We have to know how this is gonna happen, right? (29:48) And we can't leave it up to faith, imagination or none of those things, right?
(29:53) I think that's the hard part. (29:55) Because for me, it's still hard sometimes to like, but I think of like a jazz musician, whereas once you know the fundamentals of your instrument, of playing together, you can start to improv and that's where the magic really happens and you go where it takes you. (30:13) Yeah, I love that.
(30:15) So on that note, so I really love it. (30:18) So like when you know the technique behind playing an instrument, when you know how to do it, you've learned it with your hands or, you know, and then when you train it, you train it, you train it and then slowly it sinks into the sea within you, your unconsciousness, your intuition and then you are able to play without being so alert to how you're using your fingers as an example. (30:48) So, you know, like I think you are describing, you know, you're in the zone, you're just playing the music and jazz is a great example.
(30:56) And if somebody comes up to you and taps your shoulder and says, this is awesome, how do you do it? (31:00) You're gonna miss the beat, right? (31:03) Because you need to be in that zone.
(31:05) You can't be like overanalyzing everything you're doing. (31:07) It's like the way we walk, you know, I don't think like, how do I move my right leg now in front of the left? (31:14) If I would think it, I would probably trip over.
(31:17) Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing. (31:19) I remember when I first started doing these interviews and I had a laundry list of like questions and it's gonna go like this and like that, but it's very rigid and stiff. (31:29) Whereas now I have a couple ideas, a couple of points that I see in my notes over here.
(31:34) But other than that, I'm just going with the rhythm and the flow and wherever it takes us. (31:40) Yeah, exactly. (31:41) And you know, and also when you're just watching you say that, it brings a smile to your face and that good feeling, that good vibes comes out.
(31:49) And so just to add to that a little bit. (31:51) So on the one hand, being in that zone, having that capacity to let yourself flow like that. (31:56) So flow is again, a word that relates to the sea, the water, the movement.
(32:01) So when you flow like that, your very rational kind of editor's mind, your fault finder, your negative voice, just steps aside and takes a holiday, you know, and you're just able to be in that zone, which is awesome. (32:15) So that's part of our wellbeing, part of intuition, the whole conversation around intuition. (32:20) That's what relates to wellbeing and feeling good and being, optimizing your skills and capacities.
(32:27) But then I want to take us a little bit like that same intuition is what enables human beings to make the greatest discoveries that we have in history. (32:37) So there was research done on a group of Nobel laureates to try to identify what was it in their intelligence that enabled them to come up with the big leaps, the big discoveries, the aha moments. (32:52) And that was their ability to switch between analysis and intuition.
(32:56) So that's again, a rhythm, right? (32:58) So it's called mental agility when we are able to do that. (33:03) And when we study mental agility, like research done on it, what happens?
(33:08) Why is it important? (33:09) It actually shows that students and people who have that mental agility and the more aware of it they are, so that they are more conscious of, okay, now it's time to just let go, sleep on it and see what happens. (33:22) So whatever we do, the quicker we are to learn, the more successful we are in reaching a goal or whatever it is that we're doing, the better energy we're able to maintain throughout a journey or a task or whatever it is.
(33:39) So it's interesting, right? (33:40) So it's a human genius, intuition, which is the same intuition that enables us to be aligned with who we are and in a good flow. (33:50) And I imagine in a business context, this is gonna make a leader much more emotionally intelligent.
(33:56) Yes, yes. (33:57) Able to relate to their team. (33:59) Yes, exactly.
(34:00) And so speaking of leaders, and we think about the world we live in today, it's characterized by incredible uncertainty. (34:07) So how do we navigate uncertainty when we have studied and planned everything down to detail, right? (34:13) So one of the things that we recommend today for leaders is to really tune into your team.
(34:22) So because you mentioned emotional intelligence, so it's about knowing yourself well enough to have the confidence to say to your team, listen, we are in this awkward situation. (34:35) I don't have any research around exactly this, or we don't have any data that we've prepared for exactly this scenario. (34:43) Can you sit down with me and can we co-think and co-create our solution out of this?
(34:48) And this is in so many ways like a cultural mutation when it comes to the culture in business and leadership, right? (34:59) It's about that humility, vulnerability, or I would call it strength. (35:04) To say, we need to co-think, but I don't have all the answers.
(35:08) What do you guys think? (35:09) And also just to kind of read into your team to be able to bring out the best in them, to understand better what their needs are, you become a better listener and so on and so forth. (35:20) Yeah, I wrote an article a while ago after doing an interview, and I found something about really distinguishing between vulnerability and weakness.
(35:30) And I think that's a lot of times where we're confused. (35:32) And I know I was there as well, but you're actually, when you're being vulnerable, you're not whining to people, you're not sobbing, giving your problems. (35:41) You're more just essentially telling the truth, being a little more transparent.
(35:45) And I think you're getting more trust that way. (35:48) Yes. (35:49) Yes, it is so true.
(35:51) And also, when we are vulnerable, we need a lot of courage, which is courage is always strength, right? (35:58) That's how I see it. (35:59) Courage is you need strength to be able to act on your courage.
(36:06) And so that vulnerability is strength also in that sense. (36:10) It's about saying, I don't have all the answers. (36:14) Even if I have this badge or whatever it is, I don't have all the answers.
(36:17) And it takes strength. (36:20) And so say someone is part of the 98%, right? (36:24) Whereas they've lost a lot of that imagination, right?
(36:28) Or they're just, the turbulent times is they're in very shaky waters and they're trying to get back to shore. (36:37) And I see three pillars here, right? (36:39) With this intuition.
(36:42) Does it go like in the chapters in that order? (36:45) Do you start with the see within before you can move on to the next thing?
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(36:49) Yes.
Julian Hayes II
(36:50) Yes. (36:51) Yes. (36:52) See within, to see within, and then to see from the inside out.
(36:57) There's a chapter before that, what is insight, what is intuition, which is explaining it a little bit more, but there's also a chapter about pain. (37:07) It's a chapter about resilience and the hard stuff that we go through in life and how our very most painful and difficult experiences can shape us and make us much stronger. (37:24) They can help us be more aligned with our sense of purpose.
(37:29) And I interviewed a few amazing individuals in the book who share their stories of that. (37:36) And one of them is Dr. Rebecca Granger-Ellis, who is a neuroscientist. (37:41) And she also takes her own story, which is truly moving and just incredible to read.
(37:48) And she takes a story and she explains to us through the neuroscience, how our bodies and minds, incredible ability to heal itself. (38:01) And I think that's very symbolic for the times we live in as well, because the health sector is more and more taking us into that holistic approach to our health. (38:15) So that, for example, not just to look at a knee, a body part or one organ, but rather to see how things interconnect inside our body.
(38:25) So, yeah. (38:27) So that's, yeah, I just, you know, years ago when I went through my really tough experience, it was after having worked in Kosovo after the war. (38:40) And it's like, when you work in an environment like this, you're not gonna be focusing on what could be better in your life or in your health.
(38:48) I certainly didn't. (38:49) And it was a mistake because I just totally ignored my own health. (38:59) But yeah, sorry, I kind of lost my thread there.
(39:01) But yeah, so yeah. (39:06) So I would have needed to focus on my own health and see it in the context of everything else I did. (39:13) Like I needed to sleep well.
(39:14) I needed to have proper nourishment. (39:17) You know, I needed to rest and I didn't rest because I just thought that I could just be like a machine, you know, like a motor, just go on and on and on. (39:26) But yeah, it's just so important to look at ourselves like an ecosystem in a way.
(39:33) You know, we need to attend to all these different things. (39:37) And, you know, one of the things that I thought about before our conversation today was what Mark Pollack talks about in the last chapter of the book. (39:46) And that is, he talks about many interesting things.
(39:49) So he's the first blind man to cross the South Pole. (39:53) He later becomes paralyzed. (39:54) And his sense of purpose becomes to find cure for paralysis in our lifetime.
(40:00) So he's a really extraordinary human being. (40:03) And he thinks, today he coaches leaders as well and he's also engaged in finding cure for paralysis. (40:12) And the way that he works throughout the day is he follows the Olympic cycle.
(40:18) So because he used to be an extreme sports person, he follows the Olympic cycle and allows it to inspire him to be as much as he possibly can in a state of flow at work because that is how we reach our optimal performance. (40:35) And one of the things that he recommends apart from sleep and rest and meditate, of course, and all these different things is just simply to go out and have a laugh with friends. (40:46) You know, just enjoy yourself, have fun.
(40:51) And I think that's super important to do. (40:55) And never forget that laughing is, and having a sense of humor is actually one of the things that make us the most resilient as we go through crisis. (41:06) And there's lots of things to worry about in the world today.
(41:09) And undoubtedly in people's lives, we all go through difficult times. (41:14) And yeah, the thing that I wanted to say before it kind of slipped my mind was that when I was going through my hardest period in my life, I would not have used the word trauma over what I was going through, but today I would. (41:27) I just used to think that trauma was something that belonged to a very few, and especially people who had gone through war.
(41:33) But trauma is something like Dr. Rebekah Granger Ellis explained so well. (41:39) If the brain understands something as trauma, that it is trauma to the brain and the body. (41:46) And I think that's really important to keep in mind.
(41:49) And we are not comparing different people's trials or pains. (41:55) Everybody just has their own experience with life. (41:58) And it's important to stay with it and honor it and understand what we learned from it and how we can heal from it.
(42:07) And it's actually very empowering to go through something that's truly hard and really put their minds and hearts to it and really experience how we can grow through it, become stronger, I mean, mentally and emotionally stronger humans. (42:24) And just to witness how we are often much more capable of doing hard things than we realize. (42:33) Absolutely.
(42:35) I think of a lot of things there. (42:37) I think about when you talk about laughing and my father, he went to dialysis for over a decade, had some amputations and everything. (42:49) And he always used to say that, he's like, if I can laugh and make jokes and I go sit on the machine for a couple of hours a day, you need to be able to laugh and smile.
(42:59) I don't care whatever is going on in work or whatever you're trying to build. (43:02) If I can laugh and I'm getting stick and probed every day, you can laugh.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(43:08) Yes, that's beautiful.
Julian Hayes II
(43:10) Yeah, so I'm thinking a lot of times with intuition, it requires trust. (43:19) And I think that is something that a lot of us probably don't do in terms of trusting ourselves. (43:26) And sometimes we, and so is that a thing of losing trust?
(43:31) And if that's the case, how do we, I guess, start developing more trust within ourselves to trust whatever we're feeling, whatever we're thinking in this intuition? (43:42) So thank you so much for this question because my first answer to it is actually something that may be surprising to people because it's something that is so close to us and feels sometimes as being so subtle or unimportant. (43:58) To gain trust in our intuition, the first thing we need to do is to learn to honor our experiences and emotions.
(44:09) What does that mean? (44:11) So for example, you're in a relationship where you have a colleague or whatever, and again and again, there are maybe the small things that you feel that you are kind of accepting, like swallowing, and you don't say anything again and again and again, they don't have to be big. (44:28) But what happens over a course of time is that you start to undermine your own experiences and emotions or your own experiences of things and how you feel about them.
(44:41) And what happens when we do that, we gradually lose confidence in our own judgment and the connection with our intuition gets very blurred. (44:54) So this is, do you see what I mean? (44:56) This is really important.
(44:57) I think we all have some sort of memories or relationship with this kind of thing that we do. (45:03) Of course, we can't always react to everything all the time, but to each his own, just like really explore what this could mean for you as a person in your life. (45:16) And I think this is often something that we don't notice we are doing, but this is super important.
(45:23) Another thing, so that's kind of the basic, we need to honor and respect our own experiences and emotions and really stay with them. (45:31) Like, what am I feeling about this? (45:33) So the second thing that I always recommend, and this has been one of the most powerful things for me, and I do it every day, that is to journal.
(45:43) So journal about things. (45:45) So when you journal, so I have different ways that I propose in the book that people can journal. (45:50) And so they can read that in the book, but just in general on that kind of topic that we're talking about now, if you journal about conversations you've had, how you experienced them and your feelings about them or some events in your life, then you, first of all, you see what you have been experiencing on a piece of paper.
(46:11) That in itself is a little bit magical because you take it out of your head where the thoughts are swirling and you see it on black and white, what they are. (46:21) And then when you do that, you are paying attention to what some of the thousands of thoughts that we have every day and are mostly unaware of. (46:29) And so we're able to take them apart and see what it is that is bothering us, see what it is that we are experiencing, how we experience things.
(46:39) What it does for us is that, first of all, we see it, it helps us clear our minds, but it also helps us react in the moment in a way that we would feel that is most true to us. (46:51) And that's when we start to honor our own experiences of things more. (46:57) And this is when we are able to trust more in our intuition.
(47:01) And the journaling helps us do that too. (47:03) But, and so somebody might be thinking now, well, emotions come and go and they're not very kind of reliable. (47:09) And that's true.
(47:10) But then the question is, how can journaling help us understand our emotions better when they rise and fall? (47:19) As we go through the days, because when we start to do that and document that and understand that, this is when we begin to realize when we should really listen to them. (47:29) And when we understand that, oh, I just didn't sleep anything last night.
(47:32) That's why I'm just feeling grumpy. (47:34) Sometimes we're grumpy. (47:35) It doesn't mean we have to act on that and you make a big fuss.
(47:38) Do you see what I mean? (47:39) So it's, I would say, these are the two things. (47:43) There's to really start to honor your experiences and emotion, and then secondly, to journal about it, make it deliberately part of your journaling to try to map it out better, understand it better so that you can choose your reaction with more mindfully and more consciously.
(47:59) Yeah, that was one of the last things that I started to do. (48:03) And I was most resistant to. (48:05) And probably because I gravitate towards something that's where I can go punch something.
(48:10) I can go punch the bag. (48:12) I can go slam some weights. (48:13) I can go run a marathon or something like that.
(48:17) But sometimes, I think if you're gravitating toward that stuff, you need the opposite even more. (48:23) You need that stillness. (48:24) Yes, yes.
(48:25) Because life is almost pretty much like a yin and yang. (48:28) Yeah, yeah. (48:32) Yeah, it's that balance, exactly.
(48:34) So it's like being with instillness, with stillness and being with your thoughts and emotions. (48:40) And something is stirring you. (48:41) Something is holding you back.
(48:43) We store stuff in our bodies. (48:47) And I just, I can't describe it well enough how grateful I am that this is actually becoming more of a mainstream knowledge that we store experiences in our bodies because it certainly wasn't when I was going through my experience. (49:02) And so there's a lot of, we can just store up a lot of pain in our bodies and it can show up in like serious backaches and we're not capable of doing stuff the way that we want to do.
(49:13) And our health really deteriorates because we have unresolved pain inside our bodies. (49:21) And this is a real thing. (49:24) Yeah, I tell you, I think a lot of health problems now I've seen, it's just, it's really life problems that just manifest itself into the health side of things, right?
(49:38) And so I've seen so many people where they've been holding on to weight and there's some type of emotional trauma issue or something, or it's a representation to feel safe about something. (49:51) And it's these little things. (49:53) And I didn't really believe these things at first.
(49:55) I thought it was a very scientific approach of you do this, input equals output. (50:00) And then I really started to see these things from my eye and talk to other people. (50:04) And you're like, wow, it's a whole ecosystem that needs to be considered for this whole holistic health thing.
(50:12) Yeah, exactly. (50:14) And it's about like, we can't understand how the ecosystem of our bodies and being work unless we really attend to it, meaning pay attention to it. (50:26) And to really like, one of the things about intuition that I wanna share with you and the listeners, and that is we use our intuition all the time.
(50:36) We do it mostly unconsciously, but it doesn't mean that it's not shaping how we show up, perceive, react, navigate and show up in the world. (50:50) So I just think that to sit with that for a second and think like, okay, how am I tuning into my intuition? (50:58) How do I listen to it?
(51:00) When can I trust it? (51:02) And when can't I trust it? (51:05) What do I do if I get an intuition about something?
(51:08) Do I ignore it? (51:09) And how does that feel? (51:10) Where do I feel it in my body?
(51:12) When I act on my good intuition, when I've done that in my life, what happened as a result? (51:19) Should I maybe do it again? (51:21) All these different things, these are super important.
(51:24) They are about how you as a human being choose to navigate the world and show up. (51:30) And the more we are aligned with our soul, spirit, mind, body, our relationship with others and our sense of direction and purpose, whatever words we wanna choose for it, the more healthy we are, the better we feel, the more able we are to regenerate our spirit and energy and ideas. (51:54) It's all one system.
(51:57) Yeah, and kind of to change directions a little bit, I'm curious, what does success mean to you? (52:04) Success for me, and this changed after my experience in my late 20s, success to me is about being aligned with my intuition. (52:16) And when I am, I trust the rest.
(52:21) Correct me if I'm wrong, but the more, like someone has to be like, how do I know if I'm in tune with my intuition? (52:29) Is life just gonna flow easier and there's less resistance? (52:32) How would you describe that?
(52:33) I would say that. (52:35) Okay. (52:36) Yeah, I think that's, and I would absolutely, that's a great way of describing it.
(52:41) And I think one of the most important things as well is that we all have intuition. (52:46) It's up to us to hone and harness it. (52:48) We can ignore it and we can listen and tune into it.
(52:51) And when I say this, this also means that we own our own language around intuition because it's really, we cherish our own intuition. (52:59) So I can't tell somebody else how their intuition is. (53:02) They need to use their words for it.
(53:05) But this is what you just said is something that resonates really deeply. (53:09) It thinks a flow with more ease. (53:12) And if anything, when we become more in tune with our intuition, I think another layer of exercise is to really trust the subtle voice that intuition is.
(53:26) It's very subtle. (53:27) It's not going to kick you in the back end. (53:29) It's not going to do anything well.
(53:31) It's just going to be very subtle. (53:33) Yeah, it's like a whisper. (53:35) I would describe it as a whisper because I knew I was talking to you.
(53:39) And so for the last few days, I guess intuition has been on my mind. (53:44) Like what does intuition mean? (53:46) And I just, I haven't been forcing it.
(53:47) I've just been thinking about it. (53:49) And so, and I think about like, there's different areas of life. (53:52) And I'm sure most people will be like this where you trust your intuition a lot more than other areas.
(53:58) And I thought about that and didn't lie. (54:00) And so, cause I was, so when I was running and exercising, you know, it's on autopilot, it's easy, right? (54:06) But then I think about sometimes with creative work, whereas, oh, there's a, I'm feeling a little more resistance there.
(54:13) Why am I feeling that? (54:14) Because it's a little different. (54:16) Why is that?
(54:17) Because then we go back to what we talked about earlier. (54:20) Whereas I think I'm supposed to be doing it this way because this is the standard protocol of being in this box, but you want to do something different. (54:28) So a lot of times I think a lot of us are fighting our own selves to break out of something that we know we want to do, but we haven't given ourselves permission for.
(54:39) Yes, exactly. (54:40) And also like, and I have this experience all the time, you know, when I really want to do a great job, I'm so excited about something. (54:47) And then I just kind of, I tend to make things harder than they have to be.
(54:51) So it's that same vein that you are describing. (54:54) But you know what? (54:55) I also want to say like all this resistance and all this doubting and thinking and back and forth, they also play a role in like harnessing our intuition and deepening it into a certain area.
(55:07) And you mentioned certain areas. (55:09) So there's in the whole research and literature around intuition, there's domain specific intuition. (55:16) So our intuition is informed by the environment that we immerse ourselves in and also our expertise.
(55:25) So some parents would say like, I have a very good intuition about my kids because they are observing their kids. (55:32) They're very attentive to their kids. (55:34) So they notice if something's off and then you have an expertise in an area and you're into it.
(55:40) We talk about mastery of intuition. (55:43) And that's when, for example, a scientist or a CEO can look at a big complex problem. (55:49) And it's really relatively quick to figure out what the main things are that we need to focus on.
(55:55) You know, what is the most useful first step to take to a novice that would be like, how on earth did that person come up with that idea? (56:02) You know, that is also the skill. (56:05) And then in other areas, we may have really bad intuition.
(56:10) So for example, when I was working in my late twenties in post-conflict area, my intuition at work was actually rather strong, but personally, very bad. (56:26) And so that was my imbalance. (56:28) This might be a difficult question, but out of all of the various roles or titles that someone would put on you, what do you think is, what's been one of the most memorable or the most fulfilling?
(56:45) Hmm. (56:47) Wow, that's a hard one. (56:54) I'm not sure if I can categorize it like that.
(56:59) I think that my time in Kosovo was absolutely one of my most fulfilling years, even if it was, it took a toll on me. (57:09) It was absolutely one of the most, it shaped me so much. (57:17) And another one that has really stayed with me, and that is when I was, I designed and directed the university program with three universities in Iceland and a lot of great, amazing people.
(57:33) And we created this diploma university program, which was very academic, cross-disciplinary, but very much focused on helping people hone and harness their intuition. (57:47) And there I could see the healing powers of that kind of approach. (57:51) That was magnificent.
(57:54) So I would see people coming into the program feeling very much under the weather. (57:59) This was after the recession in Iceland. (58:01) Some people had lost their jobs and stuff like that.
(58:03) So they were really down. (58:05) And their skin color would literally change. (58:07) They just lit up.
(58:08) That was amazing. (58:10) So I really loved that. (58:11) And I've been really lucky.
(58:14) Thank you for this question. (58:15) I feel like I've had the opportunity to participate in so many amazing projects. (58:23) And whenever I feel aligned with my intuition, that means certain things to me.
(58:28) So my values and I'm in my soul. (58:32) I'm still learning a lot. (58:35) That is just, that is always the best.
(58:37) It's always been the best way to navigate. (58:39) And the best things I've done have come out of that mode. (58:43) Well, yeah, I mean, it was inspiring to just read.
(58:47) As I was doing a little research, it was inspiring just to see. (58:51) I was like, man, that's pretty cool. (58:53) This and this and that.
(58:54) You're gonna be full of stories. (58:56) You'll never run out of stories and things to share. (59:00) So I think, if anything, that's exciting right there.
(59:03) I am curious, how was it to take care of the documentary? (59:09) Oh, to do the documentary. (59:11) That was an amazing experience.
(59:13) It was, from my side, it took almost six years. (59:20) So coming up with the idea, writing about that and finding a way to write a script about documentary, about something so elusive as intuition was very hard. (59:31) And I was lucky to get really good guidance and patience from my co-director.
(59:36) It's an incredible opportunity to be able to take an idea that is so close to heart and be able to see it come to fruition. (59:48) And writing a list of people that you want to speak with about intuition, a list of people that you may never have met and are just in the world, top 10 people you wanna talk about intuition to, that's what we did. (1:00:04) And we spoke to most of them.
(1:00:07) And it was just truly incredible. (1:00:09) And so seeing the film come together was amazing. (1:00:14) And I'm still very proud of that.
(1:00:16) It was, at times, a very hard process, but it's really cool. (1:00:22) So the producer, Kristín Ólafsdóttir, who is also the co-director of the film, she is just such a cool producer. (1:00:31) So we would be together in New York interviewing Marina Abramovic and Shirin Esyat and others.
(1:00:39) And she, because she's the producer and owns the film, she rented this black van and there was just a group of women. (1:00:47) We were all women's team, driving across different parts of the US and interviewing these amazing, incredible women. (1:00:57) So we had lots of stories like that.
(1:00:59) That was just really amazing. (1:01:01) But what happens also with doing a documentary is that when you actually start shooting and editing the film, that's when you know more or less how it's gonna be. (1:01:13) That's my opinion.
(1:01:15) So it's like you get the support and the grants and everything when you know what the story is gonna be, right? (1:01:22) And so the act of going out and interviewing was truly inspiring. (1:01:28) But for me personally, the work before that was that too.
(1:01:31) So like the education program that I mentioned, that taught me so much about intuition and the questions I wanted to ask. (1:01:38) And I had decided to, I wanted to do a PhD about intuition, but then I decided to do a documentary film with Kristin because I thought that's really cool because then we can just go on a journey and speak with people and ask questions and people all over the world can watch the film and ask the same questions for themselves. (1:01:55) So that was a beautiful adventure.
(1:01:59) And where can we find the documentary? (1:02:02) The documentary is available on, it should be on Vimeo on demand. (1:02:07) In Germany, I'm in Berlin now.
(1:02:10) So here we can watch it on Amazon Prime.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(1:02:12) Okay.
Julian Hayes II
(1:02:13) I know in some countries it's available on Apple. (1:02:16) Some countries it's on iTunes. (1:02:19) There is a Zeitgeist in the States.
(1:02:24) It also distributes the film.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(1:02:28) Okay.
Julian Hayes II
(1:02:28) So in North America, the film is called InnSaei, the power of intuition. (1:02:34) Okay. (1:02:36) And the last question here is, someone comes up to you at a coffee shop and they're asking, how can I start to discover more of my InnSaei?
(1:02:48) What will be two to three things for them to start with? (1:02:51) What would you tell them? (1:02:55) Great question.
(1:02:56) So the first one, how can I start to connect with my InnSaei? (1:03:01) Is that the word you used or? (1:03:03) Yeah.
(1:03:05) I would say find, create spaces throughout the day where you are with yourself and stay in the quiet. (1:03:15) You can be drawing, you could be meditating. (1:03:18) Don't be reading a book or filling your mind with information.
(1:03:22) Just create that in a way, empty space with yourself and tune into yourself so that your mind quiets down. (1:03:33) You can be doing sports or going for a walk or whatever. (1:03:36) Spend time with yourself.
(1:03:37) Go on a secret date with yourself. (1:03:40) Whatever shape and form that may be to be able to have that quiet to connect within. (1:03:46) The second thing that I would always recommend is to journal.
(1:03:51) And in my book, I offer mainly two types of journaling. (1:03:55) One is a stream of consciousness journaling where you just write what's in your mind. (1:03:59) This is very much inspired by Julia Cameron, where you write down whatever is in your mind.
(1:04:05) It doesn't have to make any sense. (1:04:06) It's not yours to judge. (1:04:07) Just allow it to go on a piece of paper to clear your mind.
(1:04:12) And there are some other steps in that, but broadly speaking, start with that in the morning if you can. (1:04:18) Also in the evening, if you can't do it in the morning. (1:04:20) And if you miss a day, just start the day after.
(1:04:23) Really, that's totally fine. (1:04:27) And I always have a journal with me. (1:04:29) So my journal is full of meeting notes or whatever, but it's also always my journal.
(1:04:34) So in between, I will be writing stuff down. (1:04:37) The third thing I would recommend is working with your attention. (1:04:43) So I'm gonna put two things in one here.
(1:04:46) Attention is the key to intuition. (1:04:49) Our attention is highly sought after in today's world, as we know. (1:04:54) Our attention is a very scarce resource.
(1:04:58) And billion-dollar industries are focused on hijacking your attention. (1:05:04) How do you wanna be the steward of your own attention? (1:05:07) Because what you pay attention to with your whole body, not just the eyes, ears, and the brain, but with your whole body, your skin, chills down your spine, not in your stomach, the way that you pay attention is informing your intuition.
(1:05:24) So mind the inflow to improve the outflow, meaning be a steward of your own attention, gain control over your own attention, and make sure that you are more or less aware of the things that you are paying attention to, because they shape who you are and how you show up and your intuition. (1:05:46) And one of the ways to understand better what you are paying attention to, because we mostly are unaware of it, is to attention journal. (1:05:56) What that means is, this is gonna sound simple, but it's actually super powerful.
(1:06:02) Pay attention to what it is that you pay attention to and document it in your journal. (1:06:10) These are the three steps I would recommend. (1:06:13) That's a beautiful way to bookend this conversation.
(1:06:16) This has been a very, very enjoyable conversation. (1:06:19) I've really enjoyed this conversation. (1:06:22) Where can listeners and everyone keep up with you at, and where can they go?
(1:06:28) So I have a website, it's my full name, hrundgunnsteinsdottir.com. (1:06:33) If you look up the word Insae, I-N-S-A-E-I, and my name will come up as well. (1:06:42) I also have a TED Talk, recent one, on Insae and intuition.
(1:06:47) And then my book, if you go to HarperCollins and type in INNSAEI, then you will find the various links to my book in the US and Canada. (1:06:59) And then I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn for those who are there. (1:07:02) Awesome to hear.
(1:07:03) I will have all those in the show notes in case some of you that are listening are maybe driving, running, biking, whatever you're doing.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
(1:07:10) So thank you again.
Julian Hayes II
(1:07:13) And so listeners until next time, stay awesome, be limitless, and as always optimize today so you can lead tomorrow. (1:07:19) Peace.
